“WHEAT & TARES”
Saint Matthew 18. 24-30
Fifth Sunday after The Epiphany: 6 February Anno Domini 2011
The Revd FR JW Watson SSP
The Lord tells you a parable. His teaching story is to proclaim a Truth about His Kingdom or about His own Self. Not everything in a parable need wind up in a "neat" one-to-one correlation. The point of every Truth that Messiah preaches is The Gospel.
Christ says that this morning's story is about the Kingdom of Heaven. So, that means that it is. This parable is a Truth about the Eschatological Kingdom of Heaven, at the end of days, i.e. the eternal Feast in Glory with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, BUT it is also about His Kingdom of Grace RIGHT NOW…His Kingdom on Earth in these times of His New Testament. This story is also about the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. This is a truth about you; about us.
There is a man who sowed good seed in his field. Yes, there is the God/Man Christ Jesus Who preached His Law and Evangel to His people. His words were the seed and His very Body and Blood sown into sacrificial work and sacrificial atonement were the seed. In one larger sense, the "world" is the whole earth. BUT, this is not a story about Christians as distinguished from pagans and other open non-believers. Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, and other identifiable hostile atheists and militant skeptics are NOT Tares. Adversaries and enemies of Jesus are easily spotted and known by their own honest professions (confessions) of falsehood. A man is known by his fruits.
No, the "world" is the Church. The "world," for people of God, is their own parish and the Church throughout the globe.
Into this world, this Church (ecclesia, i.e. called-out ones) The Word of God, the Son of the Most High, is planted by His words. Jesus' words actually deliver Jesus' actions and realities. His Scriptures and His Sacraments give His Life and His Person. When He plants His Word in you, the Holy Spirit creates the soil to receive Him so that He may take root and grow and live and bear fruit.
You are the "field," this is the "field."
The enemy is the devil to be sure, the "strong man" who is a liar from the beginning. But the enemy is also the sinful and corrupt world. The enemy is also your fallen flesh and corrupt nature. The devil sows soiled and contaminated seeds of doubt, fear, vanity, pride, and all other in-ward looking selfish sins. The devil plants concupiscence, anger and meanness. And since the devil is crafty, he sows self-justification and works righteousness. The devil wants people to think they are following the Messiah by their own works so that they end up following their own stomachs and blackened hearts; a path that leads to perdition.
But the Word of the Lord endureth forever. In those whom the Christ has chosen to be His, His work of obedience has broken and cultivated the hard rocky soil by each blow, whip-strike, and backhand that layed Him low and cut Him deep. By the Blood, which He bled on the Tree, and by the water, which poured from His heart & side, He waters you and gives you the nutrients of life. His precious Body buried into the ground, the earth of death, is the only fertilizer you, the good and bountiful crop, will ever need. You have ALL of this God/Man Seed, the promised Seed of Abraham, by way of the Scriptures, the Washing, and the Wedding Feast.
When the Reformer from Wittenberg said "daily drown your old Adam" he was referencing what your New Crop and your Holy Husbandman does by the Spirit every day when you repent with a contrite heart, and are given again Christ's heart! The weeds of unbelief and the chaff of self, are uprooted while the good harvest is again watered by more Word.
Tares are essentially weeds which look like stalks of good grain. Tares are people who look like followers of Jesus but who are not. Looks are deceiving; outward appearances can be merely whitewash slathered upon tombs holding dead men's rotting bones.
This is not a division between those who have strong faith and those who have weak faith - - NO, both are good grain. This is not a division between active, hearty, busy "doers" and lazy, back-sliding hypocrites - - NO, we are all Pharisees every day in some way. All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.
The Tare is a genuine non-believer. This weed is noxious because it/he/she is an enemy of the Free Gospel of Grace through Faith in Christ Jesus.
You cannot see into the hearts, minds and souls of your fellow man and therefore you may never know (you will probably never know) who the Tare in your own midst was.
That's okay. The Lord knows. He will take care of and protect his own crop, His own sheepfold (to change metaphors).
The Harvest will come at the final Advent even as daily harvest comes individually when a human dies. You neither should hate and harass the heathen nor badger and lecture the friend or associate. You are not called to lecture and hector but to serve and love. You love your neighbor as yourself IN CHRIST when you are what you are - - little lights reflecting Jesus' Light and Love. Tell the Good News. Forgive.
But just because you cannot discern with god-like omniscience what is truly in the soul of another human being, does not give you a carte blanche excuse to relax doctrine or to jettison the Lord's precepts. In doctrine there are no compromises to be made - ever! But in human foibles, carnal sins, and tribulations which are common to you all, there is to be care, forgiveness, and the bearing up of your wounded neighbor.
The true Marks of the Church endure. The Word is the gauge. That place where the words of Christ are preached purely, where the Rule of Faith is placed in the forefront as the Apostle proclaims ("We preach Christ Crucified!") and where the mysteries of Salvation and New Life are administered in accordance with Jesus' own institution… there is the Kingdom of God; there is Jesus' real presence for you; for Forgiveness and Peace; and there (here) is the good wheat gathered into the barn - - the garner of Grace.
In the Name of + The Father and of The Son and of The Holy Ghost